Gregory Szorc's blog

Linux: One Year After I Made the Switch

It was about a year ago that I first installed Linux on my desktop system. I had used Linux extensively in my summer job the year before. I had held off making the switch because I was worried about hardware compatibility and missing tried-and-true applications. After seeing my roommate make the switch with a computer with comparable hardware as mine, I decided to allocate a partiion to test out Linux. I have seldomly looked back.

Intrigued by the open source nature of Linux and the "Linux can do it all" mentality, Gentoo Linux seemed like a perfect match. Although there are some drawbacks to Gentoo's compile-everything-from-scratch approach (mainly time consumption), I have been very satisfied with the results. The most notable perk to running Linux is of course the stability it has over Windows. It is very frustrating to have to log out and lose all your running programs when IE crashes on you. The lack of virii infection on Linux is also a major plus.

I have been constantly impressed with the speed benefits Linux provides. The first difference I noticed was how much faster MySQL performs on Linux over Windows. In my jukebox application, which stores metadata for all the music on my computer, when requesting a long playlist (say a few thousand files), the MySQL on Windows would send output at about 16kB/s. With Linux, it is around 75kB/s! Another area of notable speed improvement has been the file system. I started experimenting with Reiser4 when it started stabilizing late last year. Although it still has some bugs, I have been more than happy with its performance. Somehow, Reiser4 maintains the same read/write rate with multiple concurrent operations as it does with 1. That means that I can copy 4 files off the same disk and the total read rate is still ~40MB/s. With Windows and many Linux file systems, the rate seems to decrease exponentially with each additional read/write operation.

Although the switch has been enjoyable, there are still some features of Linux I find to be lacking. Most frustrating was getting printing and Wine working. I solved the former by buying an iBook in September. I had been looking at buying a laptop for a while, and the BSD-based OS X seemed like the perfect match for my Linux desktop. I was right, and have since been addicted to my new Mac toy. As my familarity with Linux grew, my reliance on Wine decreased significantly. Now, I barely use it.

A year later, it truely feels good to be freed from the clutches of Microsoft. If I find a bug in a program, it is easy to dive into the source code, make a fix, and submit the fix for inclusion in the next release of that piece of software.

Although I sometimes miss Windows programs (mainly EAC, Foobar 2000, and Visual Studio) I have been more than happy with the open source alternatives Linux provides. In short, I am extremely satisfied with the switch and don't see myself going back any time soon.

You can ping this entry by using http://blog.case.edu/gps10/mt-tb.cgi/499 .

What about OS X? Would a Mac lure you away from your Linux desktop?

My iBook has already lured me away from my Linux desktop. The only thing I miss about the Macs is the ability to customize the machine, both in terms of hardware and software. OS X is amazing, but I am really satisfied with XFCE 4.2 or Fluxbox. If I were running a Mac desktop, I would be perfectly happy. But, as it is, I have a PC, so no OS X there. I just have to settle for the next best thing.